Tag: kernel

The thing I like most about the brewing scene exploding in London is that it’s now even easier for me to find interesting beer. Every other pub is trying to get something better than dishwater on its hand pumps and the The Kernel Brewery turn themselves into brewpub once a week. While nipping into Utobeer, Dr.ink or one of the other beer shops in London that I’ve yet to visit isn’t all that hard, but it’s really quite nice being able to wander into a brewery, order a pint, say hello to the brewer and then schlepp a heavy rucksack full of bottles home. That’s what I did last weekend. Although Kernel only serve 2/3rds rather than pints.

Despite most of my beery posts on here and check-ins on Untappd being of scary things that are closer in strength to wine than an old school pint of beer, my mission over the last year or so has been very much at the other end of the scale – I’ve been looking for good low strength beer.

One of the things that I’ve been rather pleased about in recent years is the explosion of London brewers. It used to be a small circle of folks I’d never heard of along with Fuller’s and Youngs, but since the latter’s departure to the countryside things have started getting interesting and the small names have been getting bigger. Last year a group of London based brewers, the London Brewers Alliance, (for a very inclusive value of London) got together to put on a showcase of their wares and I, in classic fashion, missed it. This year was not going to go down the same path and I grabbed myself a ticket to their Saturday afternoon event, which had moved a couple of doors down into the Mezzanine at Vinopolis.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect and was rather pleased to be confronted by a much fuller room than I assumed would be possible. I’ve been out of the beer loop a bit for the last few months and missed a second explosion of brewers – a good third of the stands in the hall were from people I’d either not heard of or merely heard rumour of. Unfortunately this did mean I got a bit drunk and I apologise now to all the various brewers I tried to hug or waxed incomprehensibly at about how great beer was.

It’s been way too long since I’ve visited The Kernel Brewery. I wrote about them after visiting last summer and then didn’t make it down again until a couple of months back, at which point I carefully restocked with a ‘few’ bottles of beer. A pair that caught my eye were both head brewer Evin’s ‘standard’ IPA brewed with Centennial hops. While that’s an interesting enough prospect as it is, this pair were quite special for other reasons as well: the first was brewed last year and the other is their 100th brew. With the potential for celebration of one of my favourite brewer’s landmarks, the opportunity to see how things have changed over a year and the brewery’s regular promise of some tasty beverage I couldn’t really say no.

As I’ve not done one of these for a while I thought I better had do…my notebook is getting full.

BrewDog/3 Floyds Bitch Please – a collaborative brew from BrewDog and Chicago’s 3 Floyds. Harking back to their older special edition brews, this is a oak-aged barley wine, reminiscent of the Devine Rebel they made with Stone (although not a patch on the Devine Rebel Reserve) and their own Tokyo. It poured a deep red with a creamy coloured head and a had big wood smoke nose with a hint of rubber and stoney mud. To taste it was coffee and dark chocolate to start, with a bit of very dry tannic red wine. As I worked through the glass it got slightly fruitier, with some malty sweetness appearing, as well as some black liquorice and some of the blackberry leaf fruitiness that I associate with barrel aged beers. I’ve got a couple more of these and I’m going to leave them to think about things for a while – I suspect this one may develop in the bottle.

Redemption/Kernel No.2 – my first beer of the night at last week’s Day of IPA at The Euston Tap. The Tap isn’t the biggest of pubs, built into one of the small gatehouses outside Euston station as it is, and as you’d expect from an IPA festival at one of the top craft beer pubs in London it was rather full. Anyways, being a fan of both Redemption and Kernel I jumped at this one, having missed out on cask Kernel beer every time I’ve had a chance of grabbing it in the past. This seemed to be a happy mix of Kernel and Redemption’s styles – big and malty with some comparatively restrained hops at the end. It was orangey in the middle and finished with a nice bitter mulchiness.

BrewDog Abtrakt:06 – the latest in BrewDog’s “release once and never again” Abstrakt collection, this time a triple dry hopped imperial black IPA coming in at 11.5%. This was one of the few kegs of AB:06 that BrewDog filled and I got in a half at the Day of IPA as early as possible to make sure I got some before it went. It was a very dark beer, in both flavour and colour, full of fruity black coffee and coffee grounds. As it warmed in the glass it developed some syrupy raisin sweetness but was dark and bitter, with the bitterness hiding most of the fruity hops that were hiding in the background. They reckon that it’ll age well, but I’m not sure how well the overpowered hops will hold up over time.

Auchentoshan Bourbon Matured 1975 – After replying to an email from the PR company looking after Bowmore and Auchentoshan I got a little parcel through the post containing a pair of sample drams. This first one is a 35 year old from Auchentoshan, bottled after 35 years maturing in ex-bourbon casks. With an out-turn of 500 bottles at 46.9% (which may well be the undiluted strength) I suspect this is a marriage of at least 3. It had a sweet nose of vanilla wood, lemon butter, green leaves, heather, floral scented candles and bourbon. To taste it started with some sour fruit (gooseberry?) and moved through a buttery wood middle to a long finish, with leaves (green tea and berry bushes), cardboard and tannic edges.

Bowmore 1982 – The second dram from the PR folks, this is a 29 year old whisky matured in Bowmore’s No.1 Vaults, the below sea-level cellars where most of the distillery’s on-site whisky lives. On the nose this started off quite vegetal – with leaves and a hint of peaty forest floor. This was joined by bubblegum, cinnamon and a bit of floral air freshener. To taste it started with boiled sweets (Tom Thumb Drops?) and quickly moved into floral territory, with woody pot pourri sitting in the middle. The finish was quite long and was very air freshener-like – as if you’d sprayed some and then accidentally walked through the cloud with your mouth open. It reminded me of the 21 year old Bowmore Port Cask I tried at Whisky Live this year, and neither of them are really whiskies for me.

Berry’s Own Selection Clynelish 1997 – at the last Whisky Squad Rob from BBR brought along a little sample of something that he thought we might like. He was, as ever, correct, although as I’ve yet to have a Clynelish I didn’t like it was a bit of a shoo-in, even if he did make me taste it before telling me what it was. On the nose this had wax (giving away its origins almost immediately – this was definitely a Clynelish), sweet fruit, pencil top erasers, Love Hearts, bubblegum and peppery spice. To taste it had sour fizzy fruit sweets and sweetened cream leading to a caramel covered woody finish. Water brought out milk chocolate, green apples and more sweetness in the finish. I didn’t get my whisky mule to grab me a bottle last time he was visiting the shop (although he did grab me some of the crazy Karuizawa from the last Squad) and I’m starting to regret it as there aren’t many/any bottles left…

Sheppy’s Tremlett’s Bitter – Last year almost every member of my family gave me booze of some kind. It’s as if I’ve got a reputation, or something. Anyway, my mum and step-dad nipped down the road to a local farm and grabbed me some cider, living in Somerset as they do. They picked up a selection pack of ciders from Sheppy’s, a few miles away from them on the south side of Taunton. The first one I got out of the box was a single apple cider – Tremlett’s Bitter. It’s a bittersweet apple with a big chunk of tannin, which pretty much describes the cider. On the nose it was sharp and medicinal, with some malic acid sourness and the traditional cider ‘hint of farmyard’. To taste there was an initial burst of sweetness that quickly turned to sour apple skins, which hung around for a tannic finish.

I’ve often lamented the lack of good beer shops in London. I’ve not done any research to see if there actually are any other than Utobeer in Borough Market, but that’s never stopped me having a good lament. I do like lamenting. Anyways, while wandering around Whisky Live London I bumped into drinky PR queen Su-Lin Ong who, on discovering that my booze related obsession was not confined to the realms of whisky, invited me along to a supperclub at Fulham Palace Road beer specialist DR.iNK. As she’d just helped me blag my way onto the The Glenlivet balcony for a taste of the 1964 vintage (the most expensive whisky I have ever tried) it would have been rude to say no.

Opening May 2010, DR.iNK, generally referred to using the more sensible name Drink of Fulham, is run by Shrila Amin and was set up with the help of her cousin Jayesh Patel of Westholme Stores in Oxfordshire – a Londis that has rather expanded on its usual corner-shop remit into being a rather well stocked beer shop. Along with the walls full of beer Shrila and her sisters sell a variety of homemade food, cooked to Gujarati recipes. The Gujarat is a western Indian state to the north of Mumbai with lots of good growing territory and the food from the region continues that theme with lots of vegetarian recipes. However, it seems that there’s not much of a tradition of being chefs and as such we don’t get much in the way of Gujarati food turning up in restaurants over here.

One of Shrila’s most recent ideas is to put on a supperclub in her flat above the shop, combining her family’s cooking with beer from downstairs to put on a beer tasting with matched food. Helping her with the beer selection and presentation for the evenings is Alex Barlow of All Beer, master brewer, writer, brewing consultant and self proclaimed beer missionary. Their plan for the evening was for us to try five Gujarati dishes, all vegetarian (although Shrila herself is not veggie and the curry paste that she sells at DR.iNK goes well with meat), each with a pair of beers to compare, and then another couple of beers to bookend the food. Shrila’s sisters manned the kitchen while 16 of us sat around in the front room, a mix of locals, Shrila’s friends, Alex’s family, and a few beer loving bloggery types.

The first beer of the night was Mort Subite Gueuze, brewed in the village of Kobbegem near Brussels. It, as with all gueuze, is a lambic beer, meaning that rather than being fermented using an added yeast it instead relies on spontaneous fermentation, using the wild yeasts that hang around in the brewery. This leads to a much longer fermentation time than usual, around 18 months in the case of Mort Subite, rather than a matter of days or weeks for british ales. This initial fermentation doesn’t convert all of the sugars to alcohol and after the beer is aged various vintages are blended together and bottled for a second fermentation. The resulting beer is sweet and sour, with different varieties varying between those two extremes. The Mort Subite is a very approachable gueuze, much less scary than the super-sour Cantillon that I rather like. On the nose it has a strong cidery smell – real cider, not the Strongbows of this world, with sweet apple, mulchy apple skin and a hint of farmyard – along with a slab of rich malt. To taste it was, as expected, sweet and sour and very cidery – a medium scrumpy. This was chosen to go first as it’s a good palate cleanser – it has no bitterness and served cold some of the sweetness is cut out making it very refreshing.

The first pair of beers were chosen to accompany Dahi Puri – a puri (a crispy poppadomy case) filled with red chick peas, a variety of chutneys and some yoghurt. They reminded me, in a good way, of very high class nachos – crunchiness mixed with creamy yoghurt, beany chickpeas and a sweet, spicy chutney, with all the flavours coming out individually and working well together.

Beer number one was Freedom Pilsner. The brewery started off in Fulham, down the road from DR.iNK, and after expanding into a couple of brewpubs (including one opposite Belgo in Covent Garden that I used to frequent) they shut up shop in London and moved to Staffordshire. This beer was the only lager we were to try all night – while some of the others were lager-y this is the only true lager (lager being the german for ‘to store’), matured after a 10-14 day fermentation for 4 weeks before bottling. On the nose there was grain, grass and a (contradictory) dry sweetness. After Alex pointed it out, as is often the way, I picked up a pile of vegetable notes, with cabbage and cooked onions. To taste it was lightly carbonated and very dry with a lightly savoury hop. It picked up the grainy notes on the nose but kept the sweetness under control – light and refreshing. It worked well with the puri, with the food bringing out more sweetness from the beer and more bitterness, enhancing the flavours and complimenting each other.

Along with that we had Früh Kölsch. Kölsch is a style of beer from Cologne (aka Köln to the people who live there) with a PDO. It’s light and often taken to be a lager, but it uses an ale yeast so strictly speaking isn’t one. The Brauhaus Früh is in the middle of Cologne near the cathedral and produces a typical and well thought of kölsch. On the nose it had sweet grain and light sour fruit. To taste it had raw malt, sweet butter and a similar vegetable character to the Freedom Pilsner. This time there was already more sweetness in beer and the food mainly accentuated the hops, still going well and in a similar fashion to the pilsner.

The next dish was Paneer Samosas. Rather than using minced meat these instead were filled with crumbled paneer, a cheese made by souring boiled milk with lemon juice before straining and working the curds to remove moisture. They had a pleasantly lingering sesame flavour from seeds sprinkled on top of the samosas and were surprisingly meaty – if I hadn’t been told that it was paneer I would have assumed minced lamb or pork. This wasn’t a traditionally Gujarati dish, as they generally use paneer in desserts such as Ras Malai rather than savouries.

To go with the samosas the first beer was Celis White. It’s made by Pierre Celis, thought of as the saviour of the belgian wheat beer after his revival of the style with a little beer called Hoegaarden. Celis White came about after Stella took over the production of Hoegaarden, having taken part ownership of the Celis’s brewery after helping out during some money troubles, and then started tweaking the recipe. Celis decided to brew a beer to his original recipe, and thus was Celis White born. On a bit more googling it seems the story doesn’t end there, with Pierre setting up his brewery in the US (although he didn’t move there), Miller buying the brewery and brand, Miller closing the brewery and selling on the name and, finally, Brouwerij Van Steenberge (home of Gulden Draak and Piraat) now brewing the beer in Belgium. It even seems that there are two Celis Whites, one by Van Steenberge and one by Michigan Brewing, leading to the former being distributed in the US as Ertveld’s Wit, named for the town where it’s brewed. On the nose it is, very reminiscent of Hoegaarden, with citrus and coriander (as you’d expect from a beer seasoned with orange peel and coriander). The familiarity continues with the taste, with more coriander and lemon, a rich buttery wheat and a dry vegetal finish. Dryer than current production Hoegaarden, it worked well with the food, the fruity spiced paneer filling the dry gap in the centre of the beer. The style blatantly inspired Ferran Adrià’s Inedit, a beer designed to compliment food, and it works in a similar fashion.

The next companion beer for the samosas was Saison Dupont, the brewery being Dupont and the style Saison. Brewed in the west of Belgium it was traditionally produced for farm workers but these days is given a secondary bottle fermentation to produce a stronger beer. On the nose it was pure fruity icecream, like pink supermarket neapolitan, with a thick maltiness – my notes say ‘Like a strawberry malt milkshake”. The taste was big with sweet malt and bitter end – Dan from What Ales You almost ruined this one for me with his loud and true announcement of ‘Juicy fruit chewing gum”. This very much contrasted with the Celis White, but worked well – the sweetness of the beer blended with the sweetness underlying the filling and the savoury notes of the food mingled nicely.

We then moved onto the next dish – Ragdo Pattis. This was a patty of chick peas with a jaggery sweetened tomatoey sauce. My notes are annoyingly light, but I remember it to be tasty and pleasantly sweet, with the fudgey nature of jaggery (which Shrila handed around a bowl of) coming through.

The accompanying beer was Kernel Citra IPA. One of the beers I’d tried at Jason’s beer amnesty earlier this year it was one I’d been meaning to try again – after this tasting it’s on my definite to buy list. The Kernel IPAs keep pretty much the same recipe, varying in which hop they use. I’ve tried the award winning Simcoe IPA before but this one is a much more elegant beer. On the nose it had the strong smell of a hop loft, cut with tropical fruit – passion fruit maybe? To taste it was much softer than the smell, with light sweet citrus, seville oranges and a hit of mulchy hop leading to a bitter end. A solid IPA and one that I need in my cupboard. I didn’t think this went all that well with the food, as the softness of the beer disappeared under the strength of flavour leaving just the strong green hoppiness.

The other ‘beer’ was Williams Ginger. An alcoholic ginger beer rather than a regularly malty one, this was classed as a ‘spiced ale’ on Alex’s list. From the same brewer as Grozet (gooseberry and wheat beer), Kelpie (seaweed ale) and most famously Fraoch (heather ale) this continues that idea of twists on regular beers but with a more traditional recipe. On the nose it had chocolate covered ginger nut biscuits and crystallised ginger. To taste it had only a light gingeriness which dissipated quickly to sugar syrup with a burst of dry root ginger at the end. This worked better with the food, with the ginger adding to the spiciness and the sweetness.

The next course was Idli Sambal, a steamed dumpling served with red lentil dal and yoghurt. I wasn’t a fan of the idli, as it was a fairly bland and mainly used to provide some body to the dish, but the dal was excellent – smooth like a thick soup and rich. We asked how they’d got the consistency and the secret was revealed to be a pressure cooker – a bit of high pressure cooking of the pulses before they’re used helps them break down into a tasty sauce thickener.

The first match was Hopback Summer Lightning, which Alex credited with reinventing the British golden ale when it was introduced in 1995, picking up the gold medal in the bottle conditioned beer category in 1997’s Great British Beer Festival as well as a bunch of other awards. On the nose it was quite farmyardy, with mud, hay and fruit as well as an almost wheat beer-like sourness. To taste it was very vegetal, with boiled green vegetables, some mulchy fruit and hints of grain leading to hop bitterness. It worked quite nicely with the food, losing some of its pungency and bringing some vegetable flavours to the soft stodge of the dal.

The second beer was Copper Dragon Challenger IPA. This was my least favourite beer of the night – the other beers we’d tried felt like they’d been designed to work in a bottle and were comparable to a good cask beer, but this one just tasted to me like a generic bottled ale. It wasn’t bad by any means, just not as interesting as the others. On the nose it was solidly beery, with a slug of sweet maltiness balanced with bitter hops (ie. it smelled of beer). To taste it was richly sweet but non-descript without much of a lingering flavour. The food overpowered the beer somewhat, but the sweetness did add a bit to the flavour of the dal.

The last dish of the night was a vegetable curry, made from the curry paste that Shrila sells in her shop, served with rice. The paste is not a particularly Gujarati one but it was rather good, with a gentle spiciness wrapping up the veggies (some squash, iirc) that were cooked in it.

To go with the curry we started off with Thornbridge Kipling. Thornbridge have hit a bit of an ascendant recently, with their Jaipur being roundly hailed as a new generation of British IPA, winning the gold in the 2010 GBBF strong ales category, and their other beers gaining prizes and a strong following. The Kipling is a golden ale with a light and fresh nose of lemons, fruity hops and tropical fruit. To taste it is clean tasting with floral notes leading to a delicate hoppy bitterness provided by Nelson Sauvin hops. It did well with the curry, cutting through the spice and adding its own fruitiness to that of the curry paste.

The last food matching beer was Schneider Weisse Unser Aventinus, a weisse doppelbock (a german wheat beer brewed to be rather strong) coming in at 8.2% and named for historian Johannes Aventinus. On the nose it had bubble gum, bananas, lots of concentrated wheat and, after Alex pointed it out, sticking plasters – a strange hint of the medicinal. To taste it was sweet, dark and rich with equal measures of malt and wheat, matched with some liquorice. The food brought out the bananas I got on the nose and, similar to the Kipling, added fruitiness, although this time with more heavy sweetness.

The last beer of the night was a digestif: Harviestoun Ola Dubh 12 year old, their Old Engine Oil matured in whisky barrels from Highland Park. I’ve written about the 16 year old before (the age referring to how long whisky had been the barrel rather than how old the beer is) and still prefer the 12 when it comes to price/taste ratio. It’s a thick dark beer, with wood and sour fruit on the nose. The darkness continues into the taste with dark chocolate, coffee and wine fruit up front, and a hint of marzipan when you breathe in after finishing your glass. A good evening ender, happily swamping the tastebuds.

A great evening with a friendly group, some great food and a wide range of beer. There are more supperclub evenings coming up, the dates are listed on the website, and tickets go for £40 a head (which is at the upper end of what I’d expect). The plan does seem to be to vary the menu and beers each time, altering things based on feedback from each session and what new beers and ideas the come up with, and a repeat visit is tempting.

I like to think that I’m a dutiful friend. I am often asked to help people move house and I’m now very good at coming up with convincing excuses as to why I’m unable to assist. But try as I might I couldn’t come up with a reason not to help out Jason of Whisky Squad fame when he invited me along to his carefully named ‘Beer Amnesty’ to help reduce the number of bottles he’d need to take to his new place when he moves shortly.

I arrived at the field of battle with a couple of donations of my own and was rather alarmed to see a neatly fanned out arc of beer, carefully arranged in alcoholic-ness order. The alarm was not due the neatness of arrangement or anything so simple, but more due to the middle beer clocking in at around 7%. Glasses were obtained, snacks were put within in easy grabbing distance and battle was joined. My notes are non-existant other than the names of the beers, so here’s a list along with what I remember:

Coopers Vintage Ale – Jason started us with a beer from his motherland, Australia. The vintage ale has a bit more to it than the regular Coopers Pale, which is a nice light ale, with a chunk of ‘leave me to mature a bit’ maltiness and a nice chunk of fizz. A good start.

Brewdog Zeitgeist – a black lager that has more in common with a mild than Asahi black. Good and malty with a light fizz.

Loddon Hullabaloo – the first of several that didn’t quite stick in my brain…

Brewdog Chaos Theory – I assume this was a stepping stone on the way to the Hardcore IPA, with less hops (but still quite a lot) and more rich maltiness adding up to a rather tasty beer. I still have a couple of these in the cupboard waiting for a rainy day – it didn’t set the world alight but I will be looking forward to drinking them.

Kernel White Ale? – I’ve tried it before and was rather pleased to have it again. It’s still a cloudy mix of wheat beer and ale with some nice citrus. I need to visit the brewery again soon to stock up.

Hook Norton 12 Days – The HN Christmas ale and one I tried at The Strongrooms after work recently. It’s got a lot of fruitiness to it (fruit gums and other fruity jelly sweets?) and a nice rich back that holds off from being a full on Christmas ale.

London Brewers Alliance Porter – I’ve opened one of my bottles of this and this one went the same: explode. It’s rather lively and we lost a chunk of the bottle as it tried to escape across the table (Dave took a more paranoid approach to opening his next beer, as the photo shows). However, the bits we did get in a glass were rather good – coffee and chocolate without too much sweetness.

Brewdog Prototype 27 – one of my donations. It’s definitely changed a little since I opened my first one, with less hops and much more sour fruit coming through. I wasn’t too keen, but it went down well with everyone else.

Monkman’s Slaughter – no memory of this one at all. I think it was one of the few that could mainly be described as ‘beery’.

Dark Island Reserve 2010 – the next year’s edition of my Christmas beer and still rather excellent. Big with coffee, dark chocolate, red fruit and rich maltiness. I think I liked my one better after a year of aging, but I’ve no clue if that’s just the batch or the time in the bottle. Even though it seems to have gone up to close to £10 for a 330ml bottle I think I might try and find out.

Brewdog Tokyo (12%) – one of the three Tokyo’s Jason brought and the only one we opened (the others accompanying him home at the end for reasons of palate fatigue). Unfortunately I don’t remember much about it, which is annoying as it’s the only one I’ve tried. Brewdog do seem to have stock in again, so hopefully I’ll grab one for myself soon.

Kernel IPA Citra – I’ve had the Simcoe IPA but this one blew it away – rounded flowery hops with a touch of lemony citrus combined with the usual excellence of the Kernel IPA. Another one for the shopping list.

Brewdog/Mikkeller I Hardcore You – another donation from me and one that I rather annoyingly missed out on buying again recently when they made a second batch. Big and fruity with ridiculous amounts of hops, yet worryingly easy to drink until you fall over.

Aventinus Eisbock – strong and concentrated by freeze distilling (the process that Brewdog took a bit further when competing with Schorschbräu) this was a bit treacly in the glass with a very concentrated sweet beer flavour. Not my favourite.

X33 – brought back from Prague this was a scary thing. My memory was slightly going by this point but I mainly remember the fear.

Kernel Imperial Stout – Thick, dark, chocolatey – this was the LBA Porter with nobs on. I’m going to need a wheely bag when I next get to the Kernel brewery…

London Pride – I reckon this one had been in the bottle too long. Musty and prickly in a way that didn’t inspire enjoyment. While some of Fullers’s beers age well, Pride doesn’t. Which doesn’t matter as bottles of it don’t last long in my house anyway.

Brewdog Paradox Speyside – a whisky barrel aged dark ale that I rather like, although I’ve not tried the one matured in speyside casks – I’m not sure if they change the beer recipe, but every one I’ve tried has had a different flavour. This one had some nice fruit and a touch of whisky flavour that the other ones didn’t. I’d suspect that some of the whisky had been left in the barrel before filling but a) the excise man doesn’t like that and b) the Brewdog guys would have decanted it into their hipflasks before filling the casks.

Harviestoun Ola Dubh 16 – similar to the Paradox, this is Old Engine Oil matured in Highland Park casks that had previously held 16 year old whisky. I’ve written about it before but having come back to it I rather enjoyed it. Being able to taste the difference between the base beer (which I’ve found a few times since I first tried the Ola Dubh) and this has been very useful as it shows the rounding effect of the wood and the various sweet and savoury notes it adds. I’m still not sure that the price differential from 12 year old to 40 year old maturing cask is worth it…

Kernel London Porter – I tried this a few days earlier as the SMWS rooms in London now stock Kernel beer. It’s along the same lines as the Imperial Stout but with the sweetness dialled back a few notches. Dry and dark, much niceness.

Yorkshire Warrior and Yorkshire Moors – beery. Not bad, but didn’t stick in the mind.

Kernel Nelson Sauvin Pale Ale – shockingly this one also didn’t stick in my mind other than really liking it. Definitely one for me to find and try again.

Meantime Lager – with the room starting to flag we decided to move onto something lighter and this fit the bill perfectly as well as running us out of beers that weren’t hidden away to fight another day. It was light and had a definite taste of grain and hops, rather than the often found lack of anything interesting in a yellow fizzy beer. I can see why it was used in the most recent Hugh Dennis/Oz Clark road trip to insanity program to prove that lager doesn’t need to be boring.

That was 24 beers, so we decided to round things off with another Coopers Vintage while we digested pork scratchings, considered toasted cheese sandwiches and generally cogitated. If anyone else needs help reducing beverage collections to help with house moving, please let me know – I can always make room in my schedule.

Jason has also written up the various shenanigans over on his own blog.
In my previous post I declared ‘whisky deluge #2’, however a weekend of not drinking after a week that included an embargoed whisky tasting writeup (so as to keep the blind tasting bottles secret for the next few sessions) mean that the deluge has been cancelled. For now.

Young’s may have run away to Bedfordshire, but there’s still more to London brewing than just the mainstay of Fuller’s and the chemical plants of Annheiser-Busch. We’ve got Brodie’s in Leyton, Sambrook’s in Battersea, Meantime down in Greenwich and now The Kernel in Bermondsey.

With my mate Bob living round the corner I’ve heard about The Kernel a few times, along with a recommendation to visit, and after a recent tasting at The Whisky Exchange I stopped in at The Rake and had a taste of The Kernel London Porter ‘forced’ on me by one of the regulars, which moved it up the list quite a way. So, last weekend I braved the sun to wander over Tower Bridge and make my way to the brewery.

It’s hidden under the railway arches that run east out of London Bridge and is an almost literal hole-in-the-wall. Every Saturday brewer Evin, a man who I’m fairly certain I’ve bought cheese from at Borough Market before, opens his doors from 9am until 3pm, selling beers from a table set up in front of his office. They are currently brewing once a week and there’s a range of earlier batches as well as whatever has appeared recently – on my trip I picked up a couple of IPAs as well as a London Porter and a bottle of ‘White Ale?’, which from the quick chat I had seems to have not entirely gone to plan, but was bottled as it tasted pretty good anyway.

I’ve had the bottles sitting on the side waiting for an excuse to be drunk, so I was very pleased to hear some news this week – The Kernel picked up a gold medal in the best bottled porter category and a bronze in the overall bottled for the Export Stout, and gold for the IPA Simcoe in both beer over 5% and the overall bottled beer categories at the SIBA South East Beer Festival. Rather pleasingly my random purchasing from the previous week meant that I had a bottle of The Kernel IPA Simcoe, so I cracked it open this afternoon for a taste.

Being an IPA it’s going to have a chunk of bitterness and this is at least in part (although as I don’t know Evin’s recipe, how much I’m not sure) from Simcoe hops, hence the name. The beer pours (at room temperature, anyway) with a good solid head and it has a good malty hoppiness on the nose. It also tastes really rather good – a great hoppy IPA with a kick from the 7.9% and a nice citrus-ness leading to a bitter finish. It’s got a more to it than just the hops, unlike many IPAs, with a good body and slight sourness. It’s bottle conditioned so my school-boy error of pouring half of it before letting the yeast in the bottom of the bottle mix with the remaining beer meant that my second pour was a bit on the cloudy side. If anything it tasted better with a touch of haze as the sediment softened the bitterness a little, but it was good either way.

I really like it and will definitely be making the pilgrimage over to the brewery next time I find myself over Bermondsey way on a Saturday, and with Glyn from The Rake pinging Evin congratulations on his blog I might even be able to grab a bottle when I’m out for a beer.

The Kernel IPA Simcoe
7.9% IPA, £2.50 per bottle from the brewery.
The brewery has a webpage of other suppliers if you can’t make it over there on a Saturday.